


Homebodies

by pqlaertes



Category: She Wolf of London
Genre: F/M, Haunted House, ghost - Freeform, magick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-29
Updated: 2012-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-02 17:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pqlaertes/pseuds/pqlaertes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian and Randi move back to London and find the perfect new apartment. Except for the ghost. (Set after Mystical Pizza)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Baggage

 

  
  


Although their layover at Dulles was four hours long, Ian and Randi had been sure to find their gate and check in before taking the long walk back up the hallway and from there out to the bustling, atmosphereless city of the main terminal area. They ate at a cafeteria mocked up as a deli-cum-sports-bar -- food well prepared but accentless as the plastic forks and knives and polystyrene containers -- and finished with two hours left to get back to their gate and board the plane to London.

Halfway back down the main hallway, Randi Wallace stopped between a bank of telephones and a kiosk selling fountain pens and silk neckties. "Damn!" She turned around, glaring at the people who walked blandly past towards their own gates.

Ian Matheson, who had been walking the long airport corridor with his eyes at half-mast, not entirely awake, stopped beside her. She had spent most of the five-hour flight from Los Angeles snoozing against his shoulder and her ponytail was mussed, shirt wrinkled over her jeans -- it was her old college student look, but Ian was too tired to appreciate it; a prickling sensation shivered over his shoulders like ants and he shook himself inside his jacket to get rid of it. She had been like this on the flight to LA two years ago too, something about airplanes made her cranky and combative.

"What is it now?" The 'now' came out mainly as a yawn. These corridors were endless.

Randi turned to him, narrow lips pressed in a line. "I lost my bag."

" _I'm_ carrying your bag." Ian tried to rattle the duffle-bag in his right hand, but was defeated by the weight and almost dropped his own carry-on.

"No. _My_ bag."

" _Your_ bag is on your shoulder."

Randi pulled the purse from her shoulder and balled the strap up in her fists. "No. My _bag_."

"Your _bag_? With the . . . " Oh dear.

"Yes!"

He considered. The bag had been essential carry-on luggage, with their luck, there had seemed every possibility that they'd somehow get stranded here straight through to the full moon the day after tomorrow. But the weather was fine, the connecting flight to London listed as on time. "We'll be all right. If anything goes wrong, we'll be able to pick up anything we need in Dupont Circle."

"But --"

"Yes, yes. I know. We'll find it. It's probably at the lost and found."

"Oh god. What if somebody opens it?"

He considered this. "Come on." They hurried for the information counter.

  
  


*****

  
  


Two pairs of police-issue handcuffs, two pairs of ankle irons, four sturdy chains with locking rings at both ends, a box of bandages, a tube of antiseptic gel, a bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills, a pair of blue women's underwear, a white B-cup brassiere with a bow at the center, a blue jersey and matching leggings, a small box of moist towelettes, a coiled heavy-duty rope, and a folded $100 bill.

Randi stared at the contents of her bag, all these things they'd so cleverly thought of, packed into the little case until it was dense and heavy as a brick. The rent-a-cop who had brought them back here stared at the table, stared at them, grinned at the other rent-a-cop, who cut off her grin back and visibly straightened her spine, trying to be professional about it all.

Thirteen hours ago they had been picking over the remains of Death by Chocolate for two at their favorite restaurant in LA and she had felt in control, ready for anything. Now she felt like one of the bimbo guests Ian's tv show had been plagued with -- she'd thought she'd left this flavor of humiliation behind when she'd pulled the plug on _How Strange_ and packed up to move back to London. She was blushing, and she could see Ian's cheeks burning. Their rent-a-cop turned and winked, giving Ian the faintest thumbs-up, and Ian went entirely red.

When in doubt, go on the offensive. "You went through my _stuff_!?"

The other rent-a-cop had her laughter good and clamped. "Is this your bag, ma'am?"

"Um. Yes. What happened to privacy?"

"Matter of security. All unattended packages have to be searched, ma'am. We've had a couple of bomb scares."

Ian coughed politely "Well, as you can see, nothing explosive here. So, may we take our things and go?" _Explosive_. Great, Ian. And that English accent - couldn't he tone it down when they were in public?

"Well, sir, first I think we should discuss these items." Of course. Let's discuss it all. You see, I went camping and there was this monster and now I'm the poster child for the world's worst form of PMS. Let me tell you the whole story.

"None of this equipment is illegal, is it?" Actually, thank god for Ian's air of authority -- he might actually get them out of this.

"No sir, none of this . . . equipment is actually illegal to own."

"Or to transport via aircraft?" She'd seen him rip down students this way.

"No sir. But you will have to identify each of these items as yours."

"Well. Yes. They're all ours."

She hesitated. "Individually, sir. Are these your pants, sir?" She held out the leggings to him. The other cop snickered.

Randi snatched them away. "They're mine. These are all mine. My sweatshirt, my band-aids, my handcuffs." Please let the earth open up and swallow her whole.

"I'll go get the forms, miss."

  
  


*****

  
  


"You caught 'em making it on the escalator?" Ian heard the second security guard ask as they left, the extra bag and its contents now tucked safely into Ian's carry-on..

Some things he couldn't hear, then, "Too bad there wasn't a video recorder."

"You're a sick man, Bobby."

"This from someone who wears her walkie talkie to bed . . ."

Then they were away. Randi still looked upset, trudging along beside him towards their departure gate. "Explain to me why _I_ had to sign for the damn things," he baited.

"It was your idea," she hissed back, elbowing him. " 'I know, we'll carry a bag of restraints with us. That way, we'll never be caught unprepared again.' " As usual, her imitation of his intonation and accent was deadly accurate.

"You seemed to appreciate it that time in Montreal."

"We should have left it in the suitcase. I don't believe we just signed a statement claiming two pairs of ankle shackles. They could have arrested us."

"None of those things is illegal. You're the one who wanted to put a gun in it. Besides, what if there had been an emergency on the plane?"

She slumped against the wall. "There should be a gun in it. With silver bullets."

He retraced his footsteps and leaned over her, dropping his bags. "Never."

She looked aside. "And did you see how those cops were looking at us?"

"They were jealous. Imagine all the things a kinky couple like you and me could get up to with that stuff."

She smiled, just a little. " _I'm_ jealous of us."

"So am I."

 

 

 


	2. Ways to Spend an Evening In London

"Ian, I don't believe you. You've barely been back two days and already you're forcing poor Randi down to that miserable cellar. I won't have it."

Ian smiled at his mother. He had missed being scolded like this, missed the smell of the B&B, and Dad and Aunt Elsa sniping quietly at each other whenever they were left alone in a room. "Mum --"

"Now we set up a perfectly nice bed for you . . . "

That had been a shock. He had expected to return to his old room, see Randi installed under the dormers, and receive a thorough lecture on the benefits of marriage before intimacy before his parents even let them unpack. Instead, they were in the big second floor room with the queen bed -- the coverlet already turned down and a bouquet on the pillows.

"Mum." He took her hands, a little shocked to find that they felt older, the fingers almost brittle. "This is . . . for old time's sake. I'm just going to get some drinks, and Randi and I will spend the night in the basement, just like we used to."

"That's very romantic, Ian, but couldn't you do it in a few days? You're both still jet-lagged."

He kissed her cheek. "Believe me, Mum, we've been looking forward to this; we'd never forgive ourselves if we didn't do it tonight."

Randi was already starting by the time he disengaged himself from his mother, had a sort of foreshortened version of the same conversation with his father, said good night to Julian and Aunt Elsa.

It had been a long time, but the old chains were still there, hidden under the floor in the storage room, and the brackets seemed to be holding up nicely. They were always careful to clean up everything the next day (usually, he tried to do most of this while Randi was still sleeping, having to see destroyed furniture and tufts of fur when she woke up was no good for her nerves) so he doubted anyone had even noticed anything odd while they were gone.

He had hoped, of course, that the chains would stay interred there, that Randi's cure would come before they ever returned to London.

Returned in defeat. Back here, to chain her up again, jobless, helpless. Frustrated. And yet he had felt almost nostalgic, pulling out those old chains, locking her up the old way. It made him feel disloyal; this had to be horrendous for her.

"Randi," he called soothingly, "Do you think you can take a drink?"

She groaned, her face shadowed.

"You'll be dehydrated come morning if you don't."

Kicking, Randi fell over. Her shorts separated along the seams as muscles doubled, trebled , and fur shaded in, at first just a dusting over her skin, but then a pelt. The chains clanked as she lunged towards him and was brought up short, fell back. Her jaws opened wider and she howled. Her eyes were phosphorus green and her fur bristled up. She howled again.

Ian settled into his nest of blankets and sleeping bags and listened to her -- his own curse.

 

*****

 

The Stones, too quiet to be powerful, played through the car's one remaining speaker. Henry Datlow patrolled carefully, window open to the night air. The feeling was back, like the needle of a compass, wavering but always swinging back to the right direction. He let it pull the nose of his car along.

On the seat beside him was the clipping from last month -- the tiny photograph of the balding man with the pierced ear, the brief but unmistakeable description of the mysterious wounds that had killed him. Here. Right around here.

A shrill cry. He saw the sign for Horsenden Hill and veered off onto the grass. The scream separated into two. A boy and a girl. He hit the gas, zoomed up, and then jumped out of the car, leaving it running, leaving the door open. He held the shotgun up, ready. Finally, flickering under a tired emergency light, he saw the children, a single rough small shape bridged by joined hands.

Then, a great, growling scream. Good. He often stopped other obscenities, rapes and robbings and murders, was proud of it (although of course he never stayed around to be identified and thanked) but it was this that he was here to stop. There were police for those other horrors. This only he knew about; this was his responsibility.

The girl fell. The boy kept running. As he got closer, Henry saw the awkward way he picked his legs up and put them down, how he kept his arms out instead of swinging them. A child too young to be entirely sure of his balance.

Henry broke through the trees and stood above the fallen girl, who was screaming into the grass. It smashed towards him, dropped its vast shaggy head back, roared. He shot it, hit the shoulder, then the belly. Momentum carried it forward and it knocked him to the ground. He let it get its claws at him, sacrificing deep scratches across the chest to avoid its foul mouth. It swung an arm and knocked him away, bleeding. Before he could stand up, it was loping away, slowed, but not stopped. He ran after it, leaving the little girl too terrified to scream anymore.

He was getting old, winded from his first dash. He considered going back for the car, trying to run the thing down. Then there was another double scream, the beast and the second child, together. He stumbled on, found a hill, let himself all but fall down it.

He found it eating the boy's arm, blood matted around its mouth and over its paws. It made wheezing sounds of pain whenever it breathed. He emptied the rest of the shotgun into it, dropped the shotgun, fumbled out the handgun and, almost blind, kept shooting until the gun clicked on an empty chamber. he fell to his knees, catching himself on one hand while the other was clutched up to his shoulder, still locked on the gun.

He expelled deep sobbing breaths until he too was empty, and then stumbed back to the car, pulled out the plastic bin liners and began the grim cleanup. The boy he left alone, and he had done the rest enough times that it went very fast. His trunk was lined with layers of plastic, and after he disposed of the remains, not a trace would be left. Finally he went back for the little girl, who he found, passed out on the grass. Henry carried her to the little playground, put her inside the cage shape of the jungle-gym. There were other places he meant to check that night, but he was so choked with horror, he heard no howls if there were any.

 

*****

 

"Good morning."

"Ohh."

"Jetlag on top of a night like yours. I'll bet you just want to go to bed." Ian was sitting beside her on the floor, and she was already covered with a blanket and unchained. "Mum says you're to eat first though. She's got the world's most English breakfast laid out for you."

"I love your Mother."

"Hungry, are we?"

"Starving." She rolled sleepily to put her head in his lap and looked up at him. "So, did the old place hold up okay?"

He nodded, hand absently on her hair. "I'll tell you something else, remember how we wondered if your shape had been affected by the water in Los Angeles?"

"I remember you said I was uglier in LA."

"I did not."

"Did so."

"Did not. Anyway, you're back to normal here."

"Abnormal." She sat up, readjusting the blanket.

He kissed her and the blanket fell around her waist. They'd never kissed here before, that gave it an extra kick.

"Come on, breakfast." He helped her up, leered as he offered her a nightgown and robe. She giggled.

"And then, when you wake up," he said, "we can start househunting."

 

*****

 

Henry Datlow bought ten different papers at the coffee-shop, started in on them over coffee and was still at it long past dinner. There were the obvious things to look for, of course, the reports of people savaged by huge, mysterious beasts, but there were also the simple sightings, the rashes of disappeared pets, other tips he'd learned to look for. It was a rotten way to do it. Often, he was wrong about the article, caught a mugger or a rapist or no one at all. And even when he was right, finding them this way meant he must always be a month too late, he had already failed.

He had never found another way, though, never been able to track the spread of it, though he had bought huge wall maps and studded them with push pins.

There was the trap downstairs, of course, the killing box on the first floor of the building he had inherited from his parents. But that had only ever worked once, and by accident. He was losing money on keeping it empty, finding things wrong with prospective tenants, waiting for a beast to drop into his lap.

In two papers he found the picture of the boy he had failed. A birthday picture, cone shaped hat hanging from a string around his neck. The boy was looking past the camera at something.

Henry Datlow cut the articles out with scissors and put them in the box with all the others. In the next apartment, Elliot Rimmer, an athletic, quiet student who always paid his rent late, started up his jazz again, something cheerful and airy. Henry scraped his supper plate into the garbage and then, when everything was put away, and it was all over for another month, sat down on the davenport and switched on the television, gradually remembering how to pretend nothing was wrong..

 

*****

 

"God, this is awful." The dining room table at Matheson House hadn't looked this bad since the darkest days of her Master's Thesis. Instead of notes and texts, this time it was flyers, scraps of newspaper written over with telephone numbers and Ian's arcane hieroglyphics for concepts like 'utilities included' and 'central heating.' Also telephone books, maps, and her own notes on the houses and apartments they had looked at so far.

"Have you seen the A to Z?"

She handed it to him and dropped her head to the table, sighing as Ian absently stroked her hair. "I wonder if we can still get our place in LA back."

"You're the one who said LA was a swamp of viper infested scum swarming with maggots."

"That was Skip's brain. LA's the rat-infested pit of hell," she said into the newspapers.

"Anyway, it's probably already been taken by another kinky couple who are enjoying our little secret room even as we speak."

"Or another kinky couple who only get to use it once a . . . " She raised her head and their eyes met.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I'll look through our notes on historical werewolf sightings in London, you check property and construction records."


	3. Interlude: 1963

At the same moment that Lauren Capman reached for the new November issue of Terror Faces, a small hand wrapped in grubby bandages put another copy of the same magazine, cover slightly crumpled, back on the rack. She turned to look and saw two identical little boys, both frowning. Too much immersion, too much obsession -- her first though was doppleganger, and she had stumbled back from the boys before she realized: twins.

"Sorry," the little boy with the bandaged hands said politely , and then turned away from her.

"You're so wet, d'you know that?" said the other one, glaring at his brother.

Lauren picked up the next copy behind the rumpled one and began paging through it. It was offering no more this month than it ever had before -- things they'd already tried: attar of roses and a silver ring, a broken circle of blood, true love, and the things they were never going to try if she could help it: aconite, a rose branch through the heart, silver bullets. Sometimes one of the dull, illustrated stories had some ingenious new cure, and even knowing that it was probably entirely in the mind of the author, they tried it, and then tested it the only way -- the most awful way -- they had.

It was almost a relief, in a horrible way, that this issue gave them no reason to see if this month she could kiss her husband without being ripped to shreds. Of course, tonight they could have made that other test -- locked up the chains and hoped that suddenly and unexpectedly Ade wouldn't turn into a monster at all. But Terror Faces had nothing to offer them this November.

"I told you to put it back, Richard," one boy said, picking unhappily at his bandages. "We're already going to miss out on Guy Fawkes, don't get us into worse trouble."

"I only got it for you. I don't even like that stuff."

Lauren considered buying the once-stolen issue of Terror Faces anyway, and handing it off to the boys, but it would probably only cause more trouble. For just a moment she wished for their lives, lives where the things in Terror Faces would remain badly mocked-up pictures and dull stories, and never ever be real. Just pretend monsters in a magazine they could safely outgrow.

The boys saw her looking and started to walk away. The thief shoved at his brother's shoulder. "You're so wet, Ian. I don't think you even know how wet you are."

 

*****

 

"Did you get it?"

"It didn't have anything."

"Figures." Ade looked so miserable and defeated and disappointed -- as if he had hoped for miracles out of that pulpy magazine -- that she felt immediately guilty for thinking that the magazine's emptiness was a blessing. Almost wished she'd bought the thing, at least give him something to read waiting for moonrise.

He cocked back his head, the blunt ends of his bangs tangling at his pale eyelashes, his chin sticking out. Ade's brave face. "So, old lady, just you drive me home and chain up my throbbing manhood before your mature sexuality over --"

She cuffed him gently. "You just like the click of the locks."

"So I do." That grin still stopped her heart, every time.

Lauren pulled out into traffic. Ade rolled down his window and put his face into the cold wind.

"You put your head out of that window, and I'm locking you in the trunk, you oversexed Alsatian."

He let the wind tangle his auburny mop a bit more, and then leaned back in to kiss her cheek. His lips were wind-cold and rough on her.

 

*****

 

That November 1963, there were two full moons, on the first and on the thirtieth. Adrian Capman, who would not live to see the blue moon, woke up naked and filthy in the chill of the storage room some time after eight o'clock on the morning after the first. He hated November fiercely, as bus drivers and wild animals hate it, for its mornings -- bitter and always colder than he was prepared for; and he hated the idea of spending two of those cold mornings down in the storage room, with the cold on his already sore muscles and the concrete floor rough and chill against his buttocks.

There was a torn blanket flung to the middle of the room, tangled with the remains of his jeans, but his legs, pale and goose-pimpled, were just a bit too short to pull it to him. When he stretched out too far the cuffs cut at his sore wrists. "Bastard." he kicked for it again. His whole body hurt, and he was chilly and he wanted the bloody blanket if he cut his wrists getting it.

Lauren must have slept through her alarm; she was usually down to unlock him before he woke up. He was sore. God, he wanted Lauren and his soft terry robe and a bath. Ade made one more cast for the blanket, scraping his thigh on the rough floor, and then, swearing at the inch between the blanket and his toe, curled up, closing his eyes.

His arms especially ached. Sometime in the night he had struggled hard enough to crack two more of the bricks around the big steel ring they had so carefully mounted in the wall. In another two months he thought they would have to go through the whole thing again, tearing out what was left of the old bricks and cementing new ones there. In the far corner -- well out of Ade's reach when he was chained -- was a pile of new bricks, originally four dozen. Shivering a little, Ade counted the remaining twenty-one through his lashes; Twenty-one. They couldn't go through them all; before he broke twenty-one more bricks, they must find the cure.

And then he would build a bloody brick cradle, or cement the rest of the bricks like a coffin around these chains and sink them in the Thames. Or take them to the country and lay them out like a patio and make love to Lauren on them in the moonlight. And maybe they would find the cure today and he would never break another brick again, and November 30 would be just another day.

Just as he had almost fooled his body into sleeping again, the door to the main cellar creaked open, and even colder air, that smelled of mildew and old stone and musty clothes and cedar, rolled in.

He sat up. "Lauren?" But Lauren never used the cellar door -- she always used the private stairway down from their kitchen.

Nearly thirty years before following his interior compass to another werewolf in Horsenden Hill Park, Henry Datlow was a thin teenager, who did maintenance with his father and sometimes bought groceries for the Capmans. He wore narrow jeans, still damp, and a seersucker jacket and a stick-narrow tie; the heavy ring of landlord's keys hung from his fingers.

Ade drew his legs up tighter, blushing, thinking that he must have finally made a noise loud enough to be heard in the Datlows' second floor apartment in spite of all the effort he and Lauren had put into soundproofing. His mop of hair fell over his eye. "Oh, uh, look, I know this may seem strange, Henry, but I can explain."

Datlow brushed back his thick waves of blond hair, let them fall, shining, forward again. "I saw," he said His hands were shaking and his pupils were points in his blue eyes. Ade could smell the fear pouring from they boy's skin. "I know what you are." He bit his lip, eyes squeezed almost shut, and took a step towards Ade.

"Look whatever you --"

A kick into his throat cut off Ade's voice for good. He pulled at the chains, knowing they were much too strong for him, had to be. Choking, he sucked in the smells of cedar and mildew and, as he thrashed, one of the bricks around the ring in the wall broke apart and fell, in pieces and dust, over his grasping, helpless hands.

 

*****

 

The robe dragged a little on the stairs as Lauren Capman came down. She pulled it up into her arms, liking the warm Ade smell of it -- on these nights she used it as a pillow. Her narrow red trousers, too long without the high heels she usually wore them with, picked up dust at every step.

She pulled aside the high and low bars from the door at the base of the stairs, and then unlocked it. The keyring was a tangle and she had to turn it around and around to find the handcuff key as she stepped inside. "Sorry, Ade. Guess a fuse must've blown or something. Alarm didn't--"

Lauren stopped one step through the door. The storage room was freezing cold, and too bright. The door to the main cellar, always kept locked, was open. In the center of the room was a knot of ratty blankets, and torn men's clothes, both dotted with blood. The sturdy chains were gone from the wall. Only the steel rings still protruded between the cracked bricks. Dark blood on the wall, on the floor. She felt the keys slip over her fingertips and drop to the floor with a dull, high clang.

Leaving them there, she stumbled to the cellar door. "Ade?" she called, her whispery voice lost in the stony acoustics of the cellar. "Ade?"

Gone, escaped sometime while she slept -- he had torn the chains off the ring, and it looked like he'd opened up his wrists doing it; could a werewolf bleed to death? And god only knew where he would wake up, naked, to be devastated by any violent crime on the morning news. (The little twins suddenly flashed into her mind, troublemakers who might be out too late at night, playing with firecrackers in the path of death.) Lauren dashed up the main stairs, went out the front door in her slippers, her Emma Peel hair still unbrushed and flat from sleeping.

Forgotten on the floor, Ade's blue terrycloth robe first mildewed, and then became a home for roaches before it was found by Henry Datlow's mother and thrown away in the spring cleaning of 1964.

 

*****


	4. Moving House

"Thank you, Mr. Datlow." Said Ian. "That's really very kind."

"No, no. Not at all. I knew you two were right for this place as soon as I saw you. Had a feeling. Anything I can do to make you feel at home." The landlord put the gift basket on the kitchen table and looked at the piles of boxes in the living room. "Your Randi tells me you've just come home from America. Big country, I suppose, lots of big houses, apartments. I suppose out in California they must do pretty well -- I knew a girl from out there once, and she'd never have a glass when she could have the pitcher. You didn't bring all this so far, did you?"

Ian smiled; listening to Datlow was rather like having Mum, Dad, and Aunt Elsa all talking at once; it made Deel House feel quite like home. "No, no. Sold most of our furniture from Los Angeles. But . . . the accumulated detrius of a lifetime."

"Word to the wise, Ian. Clear some of it out. You should see the piles of boxes I've got in the main cellar from old tenants. We box up stuff because we can't stand to get rid of it, and then we leave it behind. That's why you can never find a tin opener or a spanner when you're looking for it. And that's how women end up with so many shoes. Thoreau, you know -- simplicity."

"Randi would agree with you. She's managed to cross the Atlantic with the same four suitcases every time. . . of course, she takes two of them with her for a night in the country . . ."

Datlow laughed, nodding.

There was a massive clump and Randi appeared, leaning against the doorframe, her ponytail drooping and sweaty. "Your mother says if you don't help, she's going to pitch your old comic book collection."

"Sorry." He shrugged to Datlow. "Work to do."

"Just you get back to it. First day in a new home is no time for a spat. You settle in and I'll bring some of your neighbors down this evening for a quick how d'you do. And enjoy that basket."

Randi and Aunt Elsa dragged another box inside while Ian slipped past them and down the front stairs. Once the doorway was clear, Henry Datlow stepped through it, paused only for a moment, hands pressed together to stop their shaking, and then went back up to his own flat.

  
  


*****

  
  


Mrs. Matheson sat down on the sofa and the plastic still over it crinkled loudly under her. Aunt Elsa was still at the door, overtipping the delivery men, and Dad Matheson had claimed one of the kitchen chairs and was sipping tapwater from a mug.

"I don't see why you had to -- "

"Oh Mum!" Ian groaned. He and Randi had dropped together to the floor and were leaning half against each other and half against a tower of boxes. He dropped his head back against the boxes and contrived to look positively crucified by familial stress.

"It's not as if we were asking the two of you to get married. Not that we wouldn't love it, Randi dear."

Randi smiled and leaned forward -- oh! Her back ached!-- to clasp Mrs. Matheson's hand. "I know."

"Because, you know, we already think of you as one of the family. Don't we dear?"

"'Course." Mr. Matheson mumbled into his mug.

"But we don't mind, honestly. It would make us happy just to see you together. We did set up such a nice room for you with that big bed."

Ian and Randi exchanged a look, and she noticed a smear of grime over one sculpted cheekbone, cut with droplets of sweat. "We really did love it, Mrs. Matheson. Really. We're just . . . used to our own place now."

"We've missed you both so much. Haven't we dear?"

"Would be nice to have some family around who weren't just in it to sponge off us. Nice sweet girl like you around the place makes a nice change from the old bat in the attic." Mr. Matheson pitched this just loud enough to elicit a squawk from Aunt Elsa.

"Hey, nice place, Ian." Julian said, wandering back from the bathroom. Sometime since they'd left for LA, he'd lost some of the roundness to his face -- he was going to start looking dangerous someday soon. Randi suddenly wondered what his mother had looked like, and if the imprisoned, unmentionable Matheson brother had swept her off her feet. Julian sat crosslegged on the floor. "Can I stay here next weekend?"

"And what's wrong with your own room?" Mr. Matheson grumbled.

"I'm from a big country, I need a change of scene sometimes."

Randi grinned at him. "Sure you can stay, sometime when school's out and you're allowed."

Julian sighed and flopped to the floor. "You were more fun before you were practically my aunt."

Aunt Elsa, with a triumphant gleam in her eye that meant some buff furniture delivery guy had been wheedled out of his phone number, sat on the couch, putting her feet up on a box of Mythology texts. "I see this place is just right for you two -- a cellar to do your 'research' in -- "

They were saved from further discussion by a knock at the door, but as their new neighbors -- the endlessly talkative Henry Datlow, the grad student Elliot Rimmer, Diana the hennaed romance writer, and the nameless perfume model who Julian fixed with a stare that was some part Elvis but mainly an unripe but unmistakeable strain of the Matheson charm -- milled around and welcomed and presented bowls of oranges and loaves of cranberry bread, Ian and Randi managed to exchange a worried look. They'd been sloppy in LA, and two days ago, their second full moon back in London, they'd been careless. Fine in LA, where nobody cared what you did, okay in the family home. Here, they'd have to learn to be careful.

  
  


*****

  
  


Randi snuggled against Ian's side on the bed, giggling as they discussed their neighbors. "It's like a cross between Tales from the City and Upstairs, Downstairs. D'you really think a werewolf used to live here?"

"If Lauren and Adrian Capman used that room down the stairs for anything else, they had tougher skin than I do."

She pinched him below the blankets and he squirmed, catching her hands.

"Smooth as a --"

"For such a ticklish girl, you're very brave."

A struggle followed, but they were both too tired to enjoy it properly. Finally, a little frustrated, Randi flopped over onto her back and put her arm over her eyes. They lay there quietly for a few minutes.

"It is kinda rough down there."

He gathered her in. "We'll get you lots of blankets and pillows."

"Do you think those people, the Capmans, do you think they found a cure?"

"They did disappear . . . perhaps off to spend the rest of their lives making love in Tahiti."

"Or maybe one night the chains broke and . . ."

He took her hand in his and hushed her. Finally they slept.

  
  


*****

  
  


Randi woke half off the mattress. Mild mannered Ian Matheson was secretly a blanket thief and a world class bed hog. And he was snoring again. Her werewolf hearing was just too sensitive for this.

Randi shifted back into bed and managed to sit up. "Ian." She said, quietly and clearly. "Stop snoring."

He twitched and obediently rolled to his side, breathing deeply but smoothly. Too bad he wasn't so obedient when he was awake.

She hadn't meant to fall asleep like that. It was fine for Ian, those long runner's muscles didn't care how they slept -- at the university he'd been master of taking catnaps at his desk, sitting up in his chair. She needed a pillow properly under her neck and Ian not lying on her arm.

The grad student was still up -- she could hear a piano plinking out 'she-e-ee never ba-thers with people she ha-ates' through the ceiling, and then the horns came in, enthusiastic, pushing him along, past three now, through just one more chapter. School life, she missed it, maybe.

Randi untangled her one still-covered foot from the blanket as the instruments all came together, stopped and then, after a breath, started rocking into _Hey, Jealous Lover_.

As she passed the door on the way to the kitchen she noticed that the lock was turned the wrong way -- nice, let the burglars in when all the stuff was already boxed up for them. She flicked it towards the jamb. As if the lock handle was a switch, she heard Elliot Rimmer's jazz cut off at the same moment -- no more chapters tonight. Out in the hall, someone inhaled deeply, and then walked away. Real bunch of night owls around here.

In the kitchen she found Ian's mug and had a little of the wine their sweet old landlord had given them. The stacks of boxes looked like a giant kid's block city. She didn't like that they were stacked so high, not with that unlocked door. She put the plates into the sink, picked up the wine again. The refrigerator switched on suddenly and she dropped the mug into the sink, jumping, suddenly aware of the small of her back, as if someone were staring at it. It felt like a target -- she turned it against the humming refrigerator and looked at that skyline of shadowy boxes. She didn't want to cross it.

Stupid. Nobody's there; she'd been able to hear a stereo in the apartment upstairs and somebody breathing in the hall and she'd be able to hear any son of a bitch hiding out behind the boxes, but she couldn't because there was nobody there. And anyway, wouldn't she have _smelled_ anybody?

She still didn't want to turn her back on any empty space. Spooked.

Okay. She walked, very fast, by the boxes. Nothing, but having them behind her was almost worse. When she stepped into the bedroom she passed through a pocket of still, cold air, shivered, closed the door. Scared and mad at herself and sleepy, she crossed her arms across her breasts and walked sideways towards the bed.

No, there was still stale wine and sugar on her tongue. Randi dragged her feet over to the bathroom alcove. Mrs Matheson had put out a glass with their toothbrushes in it, and the tube, perfectly flat from end to middle, of Ian's nasty peppermint toothpaste. The sharpness of it made her wince as she brushed and she blinked at her reflection in the street light from the window, putting venetian blinds on her list of must-get items. The mirror seemed slightly warped, making her eyes look strange. She spit, washed out her mouth, and splashed her face with icy water. The room was too cold for June.

A long uneven growl came from behind her and she jumped again. "Ian." she called, warningly; one of these nights she was going to crack and they'd find Dr. Ian Matheson with a whole pillow stuffed down his throat. In the corner of her eye she saw something twitch in the mirror, and turned to look behind her. Nada. Probably a moth. She looked back at the mirror. No moth, only a dimple in the surface of the glass, at just the right spot so that when she moved her head, a white spot seemed to flash there.

Very slowly, smooth as water, the dimple in the mirror began to twist, to deepen. Delicate contours formed, making a tiny, perfect glass whirlpool.

Randi stumbled back from the sink with a shriek and saw her breath puff forward like smoke. All the warmth had dropped out of the air. Dead cold -- frost was forming on the sink. A toothpick-sized icicle hung from the faucet. A bead of water slipping down her neck froze solid.

"Ian!"

In the mirror the dimple swallowed her face, twisting around and around, and then, as if it were rubber instead of glass, snapped back, untwisted with blinding speed, a blur, and then smooth glass again. But instead of her head, there was a violent muzzle, bristles, fur, ravenous eyes.

The werewolf in the mirror roared and Randi felt a surge down her spine -- the same electric feeling of recognition she'd had seeing that gypsy, Pitak, and poor Derek, and that bastard in Montreal. One of my kind. It dropped its head back and howled. The cup she had put her toothbrush back into exploded.

For just a second she saw another face, behind the one in the mirror, as if the werewolf were a mask made of factory smoke. It was a narrow face, with a round, childish chin and dark gingery hair curling against the early-Beatles mop. He looked into her eyes and she froze, smelling blood, and a musty damp -- old air, the smell of something a long time dead. The sound of keys on a ring.

Her hands locked onto the edge of the sink, frost forming over them like mold, and when the werewolf shaded back in over the boy's face she howled back at it, the sound ripping up her throat.

Her legs kicked out from under her. Her hands tore away from the sink and the floor hit her back like a truck; the spaghetti straps of her nightdress snapped like whips away from the sudden explosion of muscles in her shoulders. Writhing on the floor, Randi began to change.

  
  


*****

  
  


Ian woke up slowly, drifting up through heavy musty shadows. Someone was calling for him, and glass was breaking. He sat up blearily, expecting to see Randi smiling sheepishly at him over a box of shattered teacups.

A screaming werewolf was smashing the bathroom mirror.

With no clear plan, Ian jumped out of bed, cutting his foot on broken glass. The werewolf howled, enraged, and threw herself at the mirror headfirst..

The mirror shattered, but by some trick of the light the pieces seemed to fly striaght outward, as if some powerful fist from within the wall had punched through it. The temperature of the bedroom air dropped twenty degrees.

A sudden shove to his chest pushed him violently backward and he landed against the side of the mattress. There was a rushing in his ears, and then it was gone; warmth rushed back into the room and Randi was standing, naked and shivering, holding onto the sink, glass like snow glittering all around her feet.

"Randi?"

She turned towards him. Her hair was a snarled cloud. "You were snoring." she said.

  
  


*****

  
  


"Better?" Careful as they'd been, they had both ended up with several more cuts on their feet before getting the bedroom cleaned up. Now sitting on the kitchen counter with the lights all on and Ian in front of her in a chair putting bandaids on her foot, Randi felt safer, but no less upset.

"It was _horrible_. It wanted to eat me, just like that first time in the tent --"

Ian reached up to take both her gesturing hands. "Shh. It's over now."

"For now. Ian, listen: the cold spot, the awful smell, and that face in the mirror -- "

Ian nodded in understanding. "Classic ghost visitation. Only instead of a ghost you saw a werewolf."

For once she was way ahead of him. "Or a ghost of a werewolf. It was hungry, it . . . I wanted to run away, but instead I started to transform."

Ian nodded, remembering Montreal.

"It was horrible. But I saw this other face, just for a second. This guy, this kid, with a Beatles haircut."

"Randi --"

"It was the guy who used to live here. The _werewolf_ that used to live here. Adrian whatever. You were right. But he never found a cure. He died like that."

"We don't know that."

"He's still a werewolf now, even after he died." She drooped. "It isn't ever going to end, is it?"

Ian let go her hands and grasped her ankles firmly, looking up at her with that solid, no-nonsense teacher's gaze. "You're very tired, and you've had a frightening experience. If you don't want to sleep here, I'll take you to the B&B, but I will not listen to you give up at four o'clock in the morning."

His eyes were bloodshot, and his cheeks, always hollow, looked particularly thinned. His pajama top was open over his chest.

"Oh my god." Randi leaned down to put her fingertips against Ian's bare chest. There, horrible against the tan left over from their last days in LA, slightly to the left of the whisper-white line of his autopsy scar, was a perfect handprint of whitened flesh, reddened around the edges. He hissed when she touched it.

"What happened? Ian? Did I --"

"You didn't even come near me, Randi. I think it was your ghost of a werewolf; when I tried to come towards you, something pushed me away."

She slipped off the counter to look closely at it. "Ian, I think this is frostbite."

He pulled her onto his lap and hugged her. "Only we could manage to find an apartment haunted by a werewolf."

That night they slept on the couch, half sitting up and curled into one another.

  
  


*****

  
  


"Breakfast."

Randi pushed herself up on the couch, getting a cushion behind her back and rubbing her face. "Food?"

He swung the tray down onto her lap. "Semi-English breakfast."

"Looks great."

"Lots of energy." He snagged toast. "We can start househunting again as soon as you're ready."

She chewed her bacon, looking away from him, swallowed. "I can -- I can handle being a werewolf. I could handle it when you looked like an extra from _Thriller_. I can handle living in a haunted apartment."

He choked on her orange juice. "Randi, I've sat through those horror movies of yours; I don't want to be one of those couples who should have moved out the first night, then stumbles away a month later babbling that the place should be razed and the ground seeded with salt."

"We're mythologists. We know how to handle ghosts." She took the glass away from him. "Ian, what if the ghost is only -- what if it's reaching out to me, because we're the same? What if it wants me to find out what happened, why he died before he was cured?"

"There is no reason to believe that this ghost even has an awareness, Randi. This haunting may be the metaphysical equivalent of a mail bomb marked 'occupant.' "

"I don't believe that."

"If it wanted your help, it could have been more . . . polite about it."

"He's the ghost of a werewolf; he's under a lot of pressure."

He stared at her, shook his head. "So are you. And you don't have to stay here just to prove to me that you're strong."

"We should unpack the books. And pull out our notes on the Capmans."

"Are you -- "

She put her hands on either side of his face. His hair was still sticking up and there was still a hand-shaped area of discolored skin on his chest. "Ian, I need to know."

"Know what?"

"Whether . . . " She broke the yolks on her eggs with a determined spoon. "Whether _he_ gave up."

  
  


*****

  
  


It took them two days to find everything they needed -- the black cloth, the lumpy stick of chalk ground with raven bone, the book of protective sigils. They had argued over whether to use the Burgess or the Cabot, and finally settled on the Burgess, although Randi kept muttering about how "English Daemon Kings" always stuck together.

"We didn't need to do anything when your parents' house was haunted." Randi grumbled, nervously drawing a circle of symbols with the chalk while Ian kept the cloth taut for her.

"I don't think anyone wants a repeat of _that_ , Randi. It wasn't the house that was haunted, it was my parents."

When the cloth was finished, they spread it over the table.

"I hate Burgess." Randi said, looking over their notes. "What is all this 'angel's wing' shit?"

"If it works, best not to ask."

"Well . . ."

"Well."

"Let's do it."

They sat at the table facing each other, and clasped their left hands over the sigil surrounding Adrian Capman's name, written in phonetic cuneform. Ian bent and spat on the table to one side of their hands, and Randi dropped broken glass from the bathroom mirror on the other.

"Under the shadow." Ian recited.

"The hungry are sleeping." Randi answered.

Their hands together pounded the table.

Together: "We call you with names." Pound.

"We call you with mirrors." Pound.

"We call you with voices." Pound. "We call you with pain." Pound. "We call you with spittle."

It was darker, and Randi felt her skin shrinking, her hair beginning to raise.

Pound. "We call you with sound." Pound. "We call you with bone and we call you with brains." Pound. "We call under shadows." Pound

Randi stared across at Ian. his face looked indistinct, much farther away than the length of their arms.

"We call to the hungry." Pound.

Randi choked. There was a smell, wet and dead, all around her. Ian faded away entirely, and although she could feel his hand, pounding hers into the table in unrelenting rhythm, could feel the chair under her and the edge of the table, she saw only a narrow stairway in grey light. A robe. Keys on a ring.

A door opened before her and she looked into the room. The boy, the auburn-mopped boy she had glimpsed in the mirror, was slumped there, chains at his wrists. Something slender blocked her view and then moved aside. She saw him, stretched, slashed open. Opened.

Cuts criscrossed his chest, some deep,, some shallow, and she saw echoes, shadows, frantically slashing a knife back and forth. His throat had been cut at last, so deeply that his head hung half-sideways on his neck. The knife flashed and she heard a hysterical sobbing sound. She turned towards it to see the slight shape disappearing around the door dragging the body behind. As the boy's body disappeared, she saw the hair thickening, the jaw stretching into a muzzle. She turned aside and saw someone else hanging on the wall, twitching towards her. She opened her mouth to scream and felt cemetery dirt avalanche into her mouth.

Randi came fully back to her body, shuddering in the chair, and stared at Ian, who sat still holding her hand, still chanting. "Ian."

"We call you with eyes that have swallowed the sun." Pound. His voice was throaty and strange.

Her knuckles hurt. "Ian!" She tried to pull her hand free, but couldn't.

"We call you with teeth that have gnawed upon bones." Pound.

Ian's blue eyes had gone milky; when his head moved they reflected silver.

Randi slapped him hard with her right hand. He reeled back in his chair, releasing her hand, and she saw the darker spot where Ian had spit onto the black cloth suddenly hiss and steam away.

"Randi?"

She dragged him away from the table and they stood there for a moment, swaying on their feet.

Ian blinked, his head angled slightly down, as if looking for something. "Did we find anything out?" Randi wasn't used to seeing him so lost looking. Not while he was alive, anyway.

"Ohh, a werewolf was murdered in our basement." She let go her grip on his arm and took his hand instead.

"Murder?"

Randi saw that butchered shape behind her eyelids. She nodded.


	5. The Cellar

 

"Do you know why the private basement was built? It seems like a rather odd design."

Henry Datlow had given them tea and already shown them his framed caricature of Harpo Marx and a book of photographs of previous occupants of Deel House. The tiny black and white face of Adrian Capman had jolted Randi - it was one thing to see a ghost and another to recognize his picture in an album. Beside him in the picture, Lauren Capman, ten years older than her husband, stood with one hand not quite on his shoulder, but hovering just in front of it, protectively.

Datlow sipped at his tea and then put it aside, his flat narrow lips pressed together in thought for just a moment before they opened on the usual torrent of words. "Oh, well, there was always that stair down from 1A's kitchen to the cellar, and then, back in the fifties there was this very odd man who lived in your apartment, Yak or Yakov or something like that - he's not in the book because he would never have his picture taken, I suppose he thought it was bad luck or something, or maybe he was really on the run from something, anyway, he was convinced that he could breed these little fighting dogs. I don't know, what are they called? Flat faces but great long teeth, and they jump and bark all the time. At any rate, he offered to pay my father quite a bit of money to have this extra bit of the basement walled off so that he could have a kennel to raise his dogs there, only, my father insisted that the door be left in the wall so that after this Yak fellow left, they could still get to the extra room from the cellar.

"Well, they argued back and forth and back and forth, and finally up went the wall, with the door, and only a few years later, the fellow moved out - took all his dogs with him.

"I was only a boy, then. I was mad to have one of those dogs, I thought they'd be great fun. But then I went to pet one once - since I had my father's keys (and he had skeleton keys to everything) I could slip into kennel whenever I liked - and the horrid little thing bit my hand. Held on like a pirana, I can tell you. There I was, nowhere I was supposed to be, with this dog clamped to my hand. I had to go to the school clinic to have my hand stitched up, because I didn't dare tell my parents."

Randi thought to herself that the English were actually getting more normal by the decade, if this story was any indication.

  
  


*****

  
  


They had no sign of either ghosts or werewolves for the next two weeks after the seance. They watched for it while they unpacked, talked about which job offers they liked best and whether they should look for a second car, even made nervous jokes about poltergeists when they had tea with Henry Datlow and told him about their troubles finding things they'd packed. But despite a nervous night-time hour with a noisy squirrel on the windowsill, there was nothing.

They went to dinner at the B&B several times. On a Sunday night fifteen days after the seance, they were walking away from the remains of steak pie, cabbage, fresh bread, and peach cobbler, and Randi was just thinking that if they we're going to eat English again, it was just as well that the apartment was so close that it would be silly to drive, but far enough for a good walk.

"You know, it would really please Mum if we spent next weekend at the B&B."

Randi sighed. "Next weekend's the full moon, remember?"

"Yes, but there is the cellar."

"But we got this apartment because --"

"I know, I know."

"Well," things were suddenly strangely tense between them, " do you want to move?"

"If I can manage a werewolf, I can manage a ghost of a werewolf, but there may still be a murderer around."

"I still think it was Lauren Capman. And she disappeared."

They'd argued this out for hours. "Even if it was, she could still be around, living under another name. She could the old lady upstairs."

"Mr. Datlow would have mentioned it if Lauren Capman were still around. He's mentioned everything else about everything else."

Ian chuckled. "That's true."

"You know what we should do?"

"What?"

Randi smiled. "Ask somebody who knows."

"Who? Ohhh."

"Exactly."

"No, Randi, not another seance."

"Yes. And this time we use the Cabot."

  
  


*****

  
  


Randi had to admit that she liked the Cabot partly because it meant she got to paint her hands and face with silver and black and wear a wooden coronet. Also because there were fewer words to learn.

"I'd be happy to learn a few more words," Ian grumbled, "If it meant collecting less junk. We still don't have a possession of the deceased."

"As long as we don't have possession _by_ the deceased, either," Randi joked, and jumped out of range as he tried to swat her with a leather-bound reference book. "Just being in the apartment should be enough."

"We hope."

"At least it's short."

It was. It took only ten minutes. So they tried it twice. Nothing.

"I don't think the apartment is enough."

"Well, what about the fittings on the sink?"

"I think it has to be a personal item."

"There are the brackets downstairs, I guess we could try to get them out of the wall."

"Hmm. Just a minute. Mr. Datlow told me people were always leaving things in the basement. Maybe the Capmans left something behind."

"There are a lot of boxes down there."

"I'll ask Mr. Datlow to point me in the right direction. I'm sure he won't mind." He kissed her forehead in passing. "Back soon."

Randi watched him go and then gave the table an irritated shove. "Stupid ghost. We're trying to talk to you, you know."

Too keyed up to sit anymore she wandered down the hall to the bedroom and started sorting through the tangled blankets, trying to make the bed. When the temperature dropped she fell face-first onto the mattress. It was suddenly dark. On her hands the circles of silver paint began to glow.

  
  


*****

  
  


"Mr. Datlow, I remember your saying there were old abandoned boxes in the cellar. Do you suppose we might look to see if there are any left by the Capmans? Randi's very curious about them."

"Well . . . " Datlow looked at him oddly.

It was the first time Ian had ever known the landlord to use only one word at a time. He hurried to explain. "Of course, we wouldn't want to take anything. If it's too much trouble --"

"Oh no, my boy. Let's go on down to the cellar. Now, come to think of it, I think there was a box Lauren Capman never got around to when she moved out."

Datlow paused at the door, looked through the glass, letting Ian pass him. "Those kids across the street -- you'd think their parents would be ashamed. Thirty years ago you could walk down that sidewalk without worrying about anything more dangerous than a stray terrier. I think we have a responsibility to keep things safe, don't you?"

Ian glanced, but only saw two girls running by.

While Datlow paused to switch on the cellar light, Ian pulled out his key and unlocked the cellar door, then stepped down. The stairs were steep and creaking and he held on to the rail bolted to the wall.

"Do you happen to know where the Capmans went after they left here?" Ian asked, although he was sure Datlow would have said so if he did.

Datlow said, "I'm sorry, but its got to be done."

"Excuse me?" Ian began to turn, letting go of the rail. Henry Datlow's foot struck his chest, knocking him off balance, and he fell. One wall slammed his side, and then the bottom stair thumped into the back of his head and he rolled over himself, neck at an awkward angle against the edge of that last stair. He tried to raise his head, and his sight whited out entirely.

  
  


*****

  
  


Randi sat up in her bed and picked up the robe she had been holding. She smelled it expecting a sweet spiciness. But the smell -- it was like that shack where she and Ian had butchered the Bogman: the smells of dead animals, half smoked, half rotted, and the wet dead smell of the Bogman itself.

Ian?

She felt her body moving, down the hall and through the kitchen to the back door. She put her hand on the knob and heard the tormented sound of tangled keys.

Then there were the stairs. She stepped down, down, down; there were hundreds of stairs, spiralling down into a dark cave. At the moment that you reach the highest point in the backswing on a swingset, gravity suddenly pulls at everything inside you, as though the ground is suddenly jealous, suddenly misses your heart and your belly. Since the curse, she had felt the same from the moon, and now it was as if the moon was just above, pulling her insides out of her body.

Another step, another. Behind her, breath fetid and steaming, a werewolf was keeping pace, but she couldn't turn her head to see it. Step after step.

Finally a door opened under her hand. She knew this part. She turned to see Adrian Capman's gutted body, knowing she would miss the face of his murderer, knowing she would hear keys, smell rot.

The limp body hanging from the wall brought a cry to her throat. This was Ted Bundy shit. That poor boy, Adrian Capman, who never did anything except maybe walk outside on the wrong night and get himself bitten. Nobody deserved this.

Adrian lifted his head on his half-severed neck, the motion uncontrolled and horrible, and opened his dead blue eyes to look at her. Blood trickled over the wickedly sculpted cheekbones.

Not Adrian.

Ian.

A hand wrapped around her chin and pulled her head back as a scalpel kissed across her throat, leaving a ribbon of what felt like ice. She turned, falling, and saw a terrified sobbing boy, who turned into Henry Datlow with blood on his face.

  
  


*****

  
  


Randi was already standing up before she was fully aware. "Ian!" She yelled.

She streaked for the door to the storage room. When she was halfway down the stairs, hot air, like the puff of breath from a muzzle, touched the back of her neck. She stumbled, grabbed for the rail, and continued down more quietly.

  
  


*****

  
  


Ian's vision began to brighten only gradually, so that he saw the whiteness - now streaked grimily - of his shirt first and then the light colors of Henry Datlow's pullover and then the murkily lit basement chamber around him.

Datlow was pacing back and forth, his face closed in on itself. He had a knife in one hand. When he saw that Ian was awake he stumbled back a step, face twisting harder. "I'm really so sorry about this. Really, if I knew how, I'd cure you instead, but you see, I've tracked another one down in Croydon, and I have to be there, so I can't be here, you see, I can't wait until the full moon. And this could be the only chance I get before then. You have to understand."

"Mr. Datlow, you're talking madness. Unlock these chains and let me out."

"No, I know, you see. I could tell at once. There's a smell to it, something in the air. As soon as you two came along I knew. And I know, this seems horrible to you, but you must think of all the people I'm saving. One life to save so many, even you must see that it's the best way, the only way."

Long practice had given Ian the ability to hit snoozing students at the back of a lecture hall with the full volume of his lecture voice. A bit out of practice, he still managed to send a mighty shout up the stairs. "Randi! Help!"

Datlow twitched and slapped Ian several times with the back of his hand. "Stop it. The Capmans had that door soundproofed, remember? That's why you chose this place. Now, don't make this worse - "

"Worse!? You're going to murder me."

"It's really for the best. I don't want to do it, but I've got a responsibility, since I'm the one who knows about it. About you. Really. I'm sorry."

Ian was astonished to see that the man was near tears.

"Unchain me. I'm sure that whatever you think - "

"Quiet now. Just be quiet. It's got to be done."

The knife flashed at Ian, a half-hearted stab that only dented the cloth of the shirt. Datlow screwed up his face and slashed, this time cutting across Ian's shoulder. "I don't want to. I really don't. Oh god, I hate this." Datlow was openly crying now. He slashed again, a bit deeper this time.

  
  


*****

  
  


Randi wanted to tear out handfulls of him and throw them into hell, break him in half and rip up his face with her fingernails, but she kept moving quietly, low down. She lifted a brick off of the pile, and then she was jumping. Crying with relief, she smacked the brick onto the back of Datlow's head.

Datlow turned, his knife flailing under her raised arm and across her right cheek and the bridge of her nose. She hadn't hit him hard enough. How many chances was she going to get now? She stumbled back as he fell to his knees, clutching at his head. Datlow threw a lumping tackle into her ankles and she lost her balance. Backward would mean falling into the wall, so she let herself tumble forward, over Datlow's body.

He kicked her, the gritty bottom of his shoe leaving a dead spot down her right cheek when she didn't snap her head away fast enough. Randi struggled up again and kicked him in the side as he rolled towards her, and, while he was still gasping from that, brought the brick down again, harder this time.

Datlow jerked once and then lay still, face against the concrete.

Randi stamped on his hand and kicked the knife away, not bending to pick it up until she was pretty sure he wasn't about to jump up and pull a Leatherface. Then she stepped around him and spent a selfish moment with her arms around Ian's chest.

"Randi, thank god."

She fumbled in her pocket, got out the extra keys to the cuffs and unlocked him. The keys fell out of her hands and she winced away at the sound. Ian slid to the floor.

Quivering, Randi checked Datlow, ready to hit him again. But he wasn't starting to wake up. He wasn't even twitching. He wasn't moving. Not breathing.

No pulse at the neck, where she checked with a brick in the other hand. But she'd never been much good with taking pulses, really. What did she know?

Careful not to put her back to Datlow, she turned to Ian. His eyes were rolling back in his head. Swallowing, eyes shut, she delivered a fast sharp slap across his face. He blinked, slowly, mouth open, helpless looking.

"I think he's dead." she said, "I think I hit him too hard. Oh _god_."

Ian reached out for her, but she sat on her butt on the dirty floor, just out of his reach, and put her hand over her face. "I killed him."

Ian looked at the body, and then, painfully, pushed himself up off the floor and crawled over to her. "In self defense. In _my_ defense."

"You always have an _answer_ , don't you?" She felt her face folding up, a sound, like a hungry kitten's, whimpering up in her throat. "I didn't mean to kill him."

"I know." She could see his hands, one on her shoulder, one in blurred closeup at her cheek, but she couldn't feel them. "Listen to me, Randi. Datlow wanted to kill me because -- "

"He thought you were the werewolf, not me. That's why he killed that boy Adrian too. Somehow, he knew Adrian was a werewolf."

"How did you know? I mean, how did you know to come?"

"I _saw_ it." She got her numb arms clumsily around Ian's shoulders. " I saw you dead, like . . . Adrian didn't do anything, it wasn't his fault -- he didn't deserve to die."

Ian pulled back a little to look at her, as if she'd said something significant. "No. He didn't deserve to die."

She breathed in slowly, trying to come back down. "We should get you to a hospital."

"It's not as bad as it looks.." He shuddered, and she held him hard.

"What about. Datlow? We put him with the professor?"

"If you think you can manage it. I'm not quite . . . " He passed out against her shoulder.

  
  


*****


	6. Epilogue: Settling Down

 

"Ian always was a clumsy boy." Mrs. Matheson said blithely, gently patting Ian's bruised cheekbone. Ian was enthroned on the couch in full convalescent mode, piled with blankets, propped with pillows, never far from a fresh glass of orange juice or the asprin. Randi suspected he was deliberately being frustrating, to keep her from worrying too much about his pale face and fading cuts.

The family had swallowed the story -- Ian's accidental fall down the stairs carrying a box of glassware -- without a tremor. And accepted that Randi had cut her face when the bathroom mirror fell off the wall. Sometimes Randi suspected that the Mathesons really knew everything, and were just agreeing to the pitiful excuses she and Ian came up with out of politeness and good British respect for privacy.

Aunt Elsa seemed more interested in the mysterious disappearance of their landlord. "I never liked the look of him -- people who natter on and on usually have something to hide." She turned a glare on Dad Matheson's snort. "I'll bet he was in the mafia. They'll find him floating in the Thames in concrete wellies." Her eyes were bright with this exciting idea.

"If he's wearing concrete wellies he won't float." Dad Matheson complained, swirling the tea dregs in his cup irritably.

"Well, " Elsa amended, "They might find his feet in concrete and the rest of him floating along above."

Julian's eyes lit, and Randi wondered if morning wouldn't find him and his friends dragging the Thames with some makeshift net, looking for Datlow. Luckily they wouldn't find him there.

"Elsa!" Mrs. Matheson shrieked, and swatted her hard on the shoulder.

  
  


*****

  
  


It had taken her all morning to decide what to wear. Somehow, she had expected to find those old red trousers at the back of her closet, ready for her to put on and walk back into Deel House as if she had never left it. She couldn't have fit into them anyway. She settled on a smart suit -- navy cotton and a creamy blouse with a bow at the collar; if she was going to walk in there again and start asking loony questions about werewolves, better to do it looking like a schoolteacher, it would take them longer to call the asylum on her. Since the divorce, she had stopped coloring her hair, and she hopped the shining iron grey would give her some air of authority too.

Smoothing the strands, she knocked, three times, on the door to #1A. It had been repainted, cream over that old green.

After a moment the door opened, revealing a young man in a cobalt blue robe with a tiny smear of egg just under his lip. "Good morning?"

She had forgotten that young people's bodies would let them sleep in if they wanted to. "I'm sorry. I -- I'm Lauren O'Brien. I used to live here."

"Oh, um. Come in."

This had been a mistake. Old women have dreams, so what?

"Ian, who is it?" The American accent jolted Lauren, and she took a half-step back as a young woman appeared, also in her robe, hair in a ponytail that frothed with untidy brown curls. "Oh, hello."

"This is Lauren O'Brien. She used to live here."

"Hi. I'm Randi, and this is Ian. We just moved a month ago." She wiped away the egg from his face with an intimate finger. The sort of teasing you make do with when you don't dare go farther? Or was she only seeing them as she had been?

Well, either you believe in that dream or you just came six hours into London for nothing. "I really don't mean to intrude, but . . . is there anything special about tonight?"

They reached out for each other's hands, nervous. To anyone else the question would be a total non sequitur, but obviously they knew what she was asking. "The full moon." The girl said.

Lauren realized she had tears slipping down her cheeks.

The young man -- so handsome, was it him? -- took her arm. "Please, come sit down, Mrs. Capman." He led her to the couch. "We're very sorry about your husband."

"I dreamed about him two days ago." She settled herself, eyes roaming the walls, comparing the way they had changed things. The colors of the furniture were more muted, but they'd put their bookshelves in the same place as Ade's had been, and she recognized many of the books -- they had gone down the same dead ends she and Ade had. Poor children. "The day my divorce came through -- Doug O'Brien, my third husband. Ade was my second, he was the only one . . . " She was babbling.

The girl handed her a tissue box. "Mrs. Capman, do you believe in ghosts?"

"After Ade, I believe in everything."

The young man put his arm around the girl's shoulder's. It was her, had to be. Lauren could see it in his eyes, the look she herself must have worn, always trying to make them feel less alone, always ready to follow them, protect them.

"I saw in the paper that Henry Datlow disappeared. He killed Ade, didn't he?"

"Yes."

She pulled up another tissue. "I always thought so. But I could never . . . You saw Ade's ghost?"

"He warned me about Mr. Datlow." The girl whispered. "He saved Ian's life."

Lauren smoothed back her hair. "I don't think you'll be seeing him again. In my dream he said he . . . he was going on. He said I should come and thank you, and . . . he said I should tell you that he never gave up." She stood up and squeezed the girl's hand. "And he didn't, you know, he never ever gave up." She hurried for the door, the past crowding in on her.

"Mrs. Capman -- "

"I should be going home." She turned at the door, stuffing her tissues into her pocket, "If I ever find anything that will help you, I'll let you know."

July was doing its level best to be sunny, although there were dull clouds crowding in the north. Lauren O'Brien rolled down her car windows and pulled into traffic. For a moment she looked back over her shoulder, prayed luck onto the brick front of Deel House, and then she drove away from there for the last time.

=1998=


End file.
